Escape the Fate lead singer Craig Mabbitt is so proud of his 2010 Dodge Challenger that during a recent photo shoot for the band, he asked for a picture his brand new daily driver.

“I was all dressed up and I was like, “Dude, take some pictures of me and my car,” he says. “So I actually got a few shots, it worked out. I’ve never had my hands on a brand new nice car, I feel so good every time I get in it. I’ve always driven pieces of crap.”

While the band was in the studio recording their new self-titled album out Nov. 2, Mabbitt watched a lot of Discovery Channel shows, which initially got him thinking about musclecars. “It was an Overhaulin’ marathon on TV one day and it was all about the Mopars and American muscle, all Mopar!” he says.

His interest continued to pique when he saw a Challenger while at Pep Boys fixing his old 2000 Buick Century. It was parked across the street at a Pizza Hut and just caught his eye.

“I was like, ‘What the f**k is this?’ It was a Dodge Challenger and then I saw a commercial for it. The commercial was just the car in the middle of a field and it said, “For people who really love cars.” And that’s all it said. I was like, ‘That’s my car. I’ve got to get it,'” he laughs. “After I saw it, I’d randomly see it on the freeway. I was like, ‘I need this car, I love this car.'”

Although he only bought it a few months ago, it’s become the perfect car for his road trips to Phoenix, to visit family, and to Vegas. “The system’s bumping, the A/C’s kicking in your face ice cold. The inside of it makes you feel like you’re in an airplane. It’s built to where it keeps the sun out of the car, I just love it.”

Mabbitt also looked at the Mustang and Camaro. “I just couldn’t think anything better to get than the Challenger,” he says. “Our bassist really wants to get the Camaro because he’s like, ‘I’ll get the Camaro and I’ll race you!’ I have no idea if he’s going to or not. If he does, man, I’ll race him, it’ll be awesome. We’ll put those two new musclecars to the test.”

The Challenger gets a perfect 10 rating from its owner and there is nothing Mabbitt dislikes about it. “It stays true to its old musclecar body style, but it’s revamped for today. I love everything about it,” Mabbitt says. “I don’t like the fact I haven’t bought rims for it. That’s about the only thing. First priority was obviously a sound system. The stock wasn’t bumping loud enough.”

His dad recently took a photo of Mabbitt with his Challenger and sent them to friends. “He’s proud and he’s just happy I finally have a nice car. Like, I can’t believe my son’s driving that around!”

Although he saw the Challenger while at Pep Boys, shortly after that encounter, he bought what was his dream car at that time, a 1966 Volkswagen Beetle. Although just three later he gave in and got the Challenger.

“It’s black, blacked out, lowered, rims, everything original,” he says. “I’ve always loved those cars. All my life I’ve driven Hondas and my dream car for a while was a Volkswagen Bug.”

He realized the Beetle was more of a fun “toy car” instead of a daily driver and unreliable for the drive from SoCal to Phoenix.

“The Bug is so low to the ground that if you hit a bump, the whole thing shakes,” he says. “There’s no A/C, but it looked rad and it’s one of the cars I’ve always wanted. I tried driving it everyday to the studio to record and realized more and more it wasn’t practical. I started looking for another vehicle and I just didn’t want anything else but that Challenger.”

Mabbitt rates the Beetle a 7 and is in the process of selling it to his dad. It’s a bit of a role reversal, since he bought all his previous used cars from his dad.

Car he learned to drive in

“My dad had a bail bond company, so all through high school if I raised enough money, like $500, he hooked me up with a car,” Mabbitt says. “The first car I drove was a 1987 Honda Accord, it had no back windshield, no AC, the interior looked like Cinco De Mayo.”

Mabbitt’s dad always had plenty of cars around. “It was all these beat down, crappy cars people were putting up for bail.”

He was so thrilled to own a car, he upgraded it as best as he could. “I was like the Ferris Bueller of my high school — a funny guy that everybody liked. I didn’t have a certain clique I’d hang out with. Once I finally got a vehicle, I had to do a couple things to make it more of a comedic vehicle and not a piece of crap,” he says.

He went to Walmart to see what he could buy to embellish his car. “In those days Walmart had spinner hub caps that you lock into your wheel and it would look like spinner rims,” Mabbitt recalls. “I put a piece of cardboard where the back windshield wasn’t at, and wrote: ‘Caution: this is not an actual window.'” And he spray painted lime green flames on the exterior, adding that it looked like “really crappy flames.”

Having an over the top sound system was important to Mabbitt even back then. “I put my stereo system from my bedroom and ran the wires inside the car until it powered that stereo on and that was my car stereo,” he says.

Although Mabbitt could only afford to buy used Hondas, he grew up with an appreciation for musclecars from his dad, who collected Pontiac Firebirds. “He would always talk about him fixing his first car, a Chevy Nova. He cut out the top and did a T-top himself,” he laughs. “I guess he was doing weird things to cars, just like me, I had spinner hubcaps and he gave his old beat up Nova a T top.”

Learning how to drive a manual tranny wasn’t a problem, but learning how to in the desert heat of Phoenix without air conditioning was tough. “It can get real frustrating,” he says. “All that does is it makes you want to learn even quicker.”

Favorite road trip

“It’s hard for me to say what my favorite road trip is because road trips for me these days are just being on tour,” Mabbitt says. “The past five to six years of my life 80 percent of my time has been spent on tour.”

There was one memorable drive about a year ago on their last U.S. tour, when the band had a rare day off and they were on the road from Seattle to Canada. “There was nothing but countryside, it looked real beautiful outside,” he begins.

“Since it was a day off, everybody for some reason was in the mood to drink with me, because I’m the only one that really drinks in the band. The other guys are just like if it’s a special night, ‘Yeah, I’ll rage a little bit.” I’m more of the ‘Why not just hang out every night?'” he laughs.

A few members of the crew joined Mabbitt in a drinking game while watching “Teen Wolf.” “Every time he howled or made a basket or his friend wore a different shirt with a clever saying on it, we all had to take a drink,” Mabbitt recalls.

Looking out the window at the beautiful surrounding was an interesting juxtaposition to what was going on inside. “We all ended up getting super hammered in the tour bus. We all had to go to the bathroom at the same time, so we stopped. Outside looked like the beginning of “300” just that yellow wheat field. So we were all standing there, all pissing in a row,” he laughs. “It was a really awesome day.”

Escape the Fate

Escape the Fate releases their self-titled album Nov. 2. A street track called “Massacre” is available on their Myspace page, as well as the video and song “Issues.”

The album reflects the diversity of the band’s musical styles. “It’s a definite mix of a lot of different styles of music,” he describes. “We’ve got the heavy screaming songs, we’ve got the metal songs like minute long solos, we’ve got the rock anthemic songs with sing-along choruses, we’ve got the dancey, groovy, jazzy, poppy rock songs. But they all have the same type of direction to them.”

Mabbitt says every song on this album has a similar feel to it. “It’s a little bit for every rock fan. And it sounds great in my car,” he laughs. “We like to just say that our genre of music is ‘Escape the Fate.'”

After the album is released, the band will tour Europe and they plan to hit the road on a headlining tour in North America, Australia and Japan. For more information visit escapethefate.com.